Gybing is a downwind turn where the rig is swung over the nose whilst the body remains at the back of the board. In lighter winds it’s a relatively simple turn, but in stronger winds it becomes a fast, dynamic and really exciting move. Like all transitions, it’s down to good vision and maintaining a counter balance with the rig before during and after the rig is released and rotated over the nose. Developing the right technique in lighter winds will give you the skills and confidence to master faster and faster turns in stronger winds. Carving a turn on a small board feels incredible and well worth the effort to learn it!

NON-PLAING CARVE GYBING

High-speed turns are called a carve gybes, but because you’ll be learning in lighter winds at a slower speeds, the first gybe you’ll learn is a non-planing carve gybe (NPCG). These uses the core principles, foot movement and rig rotations skills that can later be transferred into stronger wind planing gybes.

GET THE BASICS RIGHT FIRST

1. Always adopt a wide hand and foot spread for maximum control and leverage.
2. Try to look forward and where you want to end up, not at the kit.
3. As ever, position and move the mast and whole rig in the opposite direction to the body. E.g. If the rig is forward and leant out of the turn, the body should be back and leaning into the turn.
4. If you’re board has a daggerboard, always have the daggerboard up for gybing

Especially mid turn, orientation and simplification are key.

So use this LOOK, LEAN AND LEVER mantra.

LOOK where you want to go!

LEAN where you want to go!

LEVER the rig in the opposite direction to counter balance!

E.G. If you’re turning downwind to the right – Look right, lean to the right and lever the rig to the left.

Gybe 1

NPCG Gybe Entry

Adopt a wide foot and hand spread. Use your downwind steering skills to turn the board by twisting the rig forward with an extended front arm and flexing the rear arm, keeping the body low over the back foot on the inside rail.

Gybe 2

NPCG Mid Gybe: LOOK, LEAN & LEVER!

As the board turns downwind, the mast/rig is levered forward and out of the turn as the body looks and leans back and into the turn. This whole process is made so much easier if you focus on one key skill and that’s keeping the rear/clew hand pulled in close to your head. Pulling in and down on the rear hand, locks the rig in place, encourages the board to turn and counter balances against the mast that’s leant out of the turn.

TOP TIP: Before the foot change and before the rig rotation, try to keep the whole rig at roughly 90 degrees to the board.

Gybe 3

Gybe 4

NPCG Shift & Switch The Feet

As the board faces dead downwind, look where you want to go and pull down on the boom. Keep the shoulders back and continue leaning sideways into the turn as the mast is leant out of the turn. Keep the shoulders back as you bring the front foot back to switch the feet round. Before, during and after the foot switch, keep pulling that clew hand in and down towards your head and keep the rig at 90 degrees to the board. Always re-adopt a wide spread on your feet to help steer the board and prepare for the rig rotation.

Gybe 5

Gybe 6

NPCG: Rig Rotating

Slide the front hand up to the mast and look where you want to go. Release the rear hand and try to keep the mast forward as the boom swings over the nose. Extend the mast hand to keep the rig away from the body as the old backhand passes under the boom to grab the new side of the boom and draw the rig forward.

Gybe 7

After collecting the rig, drawn it forward with the new front arm, sinking down and back into that ‘drop and push’ Super 7 stance to counter balance the forward rig.

GYBING PROBLEMS

Board won’t turn? Usually down to not looking, leaning or pulling that backhand in towards the head to help lever the rig out of the turn.

If the rig falls downwind at the end, it often means the rig rotation was too late, you broke at the waist, looked at the sail or were too far into wind when releasing the rig.

If the rig won’t swing over the nose or the mast comes in towards the body, it often means that clew hand wasn’t pulled in tight enough or the sail was rotated too early.

Simple Summary

Look where you want to go.

Lean the rig forward and out of the turn as the body stays back and leans into the turn.

Extend the front arm and pull in and down on the clew hand just before, during and after changing the feet.

Keep the rig at 90 degrees to the board and rotate it on a board reach.

Drop low, use an under arm movement to grab the boom on the new side and low out of that turn!

So that’s tacking and gybing sorted, how about we learn to sail faster in the harness and footstraps!

SKILLS & DRILLS

A great skill to practice the end of a gybe is a clew first beachstart. Start on a broad reach, keep the rig at 90 degrees to the board and pull in and down on the boom with the clew hand.

Clew First Beach Start

It’s really worth setting a board up on the beach to practice the foot and rig work for tacks and gybes.

Simon Bornhoft Windwise

www.windwise.net

SB gets mega manoeuvrable

With deep winter on its way Simon Bornhoft looks at a fun, dynamic, body warming windsurfing exercise with great added value. Photos: Karen Bornhoft / WindWise

Considering the time of year I’ve decided to give you a fun, easy, rigorous winter warming exercise that will instantly improve your manoeuvrability, help your gybes and most definitely assist in riding swell or waves. Even if you’re at a non-planing improver / intermediate level you can still do this exercise – the only difference is that you can’t lean the body so acutely into the turns as you have less inertia and support from the rig. As ever, we’re going to break the move down into component parts and focus on proven methods that develop the muscle memory to MAKE YOUR MOVE. Accentuate and repeat each session, rather than just blast up and down all day. Finally, close observers will notice that the first three sessions link into previous Make Your Move features, such is the value and importance of these WindWise skills.

Session 1: Hook Out & Hold On

Session 2: Switch-Stance

Session 3: Clew-First Beachstart

Session 4: Extreme Flat Water Waveriding

Session 5: Strap-to-Strap Gybing

Click here to read WindWise 270 in full…

Simon Bornhoft makes a swift exit

As winter tightens its grip we all want to spend what time we can blasting over the cooler water rather than submersed in it. Simon Bornhoft offers some crucial skills and drills to ensure speedier waterstarts. Photos: Karen Bornhoft / WindWise

SCENARIO 1: Falling In Mid-Gybe

A common dismount is when body and rig fall into the turn mid-gybe (usually due to not leaning the rig out of the turn enough to counterbalance). A good sailor will do all they can to hold on to the boom and then pop back up onto the board and sail away clew-first. If you want to achieve this, get brilliant at clew-first beachstarts!

SCENARIO 2: Facing the Wrong Way?

How many times is the kit set up just right, but you want to go back in the opposite direction? Being able to spin board and rig round without dropping the sail saves time, exhausting swimming and the possible impact of oncoming waves. Being able to do a waterstart gybe is one of the most time-saving (and energy-economic) skills you can learn.

Click here to read WindWise 269 in full…

Duck-gybe with SB

Can’t gybe? Don’t worry, you stand a very decent chance of duck-gybing! Simon Bornhoft breaks down this seemingly elusive ‘trick’ to make it achievable – regardless of your level. Photos: Karen Bornhoft / WindWise

If you had two cloned intermediates and one focused just on gybing and the other just on duck-gybing, the odds are that the duck-gyber would learn their move the quickest and be most likely to plane out too. Despite limiting beliefs, my tests have proved that duck-gybing can actually be easier to learn than gybing. In fact, when someone comes on a course and dedicates decent time to light wind skills and drills and then makes 40-50 duck-gybe attempts in planing winds, the success rate is very high. I’m not talking about advanced sailors, either. If you can blast in the straps you can duck-gybe! Here’s how…

Skills & Drills

Session 1: Sail 180s.

Session 2: Switch-stance.

Session 3: Non-planing duck-gybe – involving our ‘upwind-downwinder’, ‘sail 180s’ & ‘switch-stance’ skills and drills.

Session 4: MAKE YOUR MOVE – the fully planing duck-gybe!

Key Principles

Exaggerate and commit to our WindWise Principles, adding finer detail to speed up MAKING YOUR MOVE!

Vision: Look forward and through the turn to where you want to go.

Trim: Adopt a wide foot spread to steer and lever the board.

Opposition: Rig moves one way, you move in the opposite direction (and vice versa).

Power: Wide arm spread, pulling down on the boom before and after ‘ducking’.

Stance: Going and out of the turn, adopt a super-7 ‘drop-&-push’ stance with flexed back leg and extended front leg.

Build your skills, confidence and neuromuscular propriaception (muscle memory) by trying the following sessions on land first then using a large enough board to uphaul with a sub 6.0m rig on the water.

Click here to read WindWise 268 in full…

Simon Bornhoft – gybing, part 2

Simon Bornhoft strongly suggests working on these skill and move enhancing drills, which will help you MAKE YOUR MOVE while having a great time on the water! Photos: Karen Bornhoft / WindWise

Hopefully you’ve had time to digest and try some of the skills and drills from last month’s feature. As we’re now heading into winter I thought we’d offer some higher wind action that not only guarantees gybe improvement, but also boosts your overall technique.

Unhook & Hold On simulates setting up for moves, jumps, gybes and duck-gybes.

Flat Water Waveriding develops blasting confidence, steering, all gybes, and waveriding.

Finally, the Rig Rotator is for all gybes, helicopter tacks and any other time you rotate a rig. So break that plateau with these fun run-by-run suggestions – all made, as ever, one accentuated point at a time!

Skills & Drills

Session 1 – Unhook & Hold On

Session 2 – Flat Water Waveriding

Session 3 – Rig Rotator

Session 4 – MAKE YOUR MOVE!

Click here to read WindWise 267 in full…

SB Gybes...

Simon Bornhoft breaks key transitions down into component parts to dramatically speed up the understanding, training time and probability of actually MAKING YOUR MOVES! Photos: Karen Bornhoft / WindWise

In windsurfing we talk in terms of weeks, months or years trying to learn something, but in fact it’s so often only seconds spent on the important part of our objectives.

As you might know, my coaching ethos is to break windsurfing down into achievable, transferable multi-level skills that link together to increase the prospects of actually learning something. Out of the many thousands I’ve coached, those who mix their precious sailing time with skills training always make the quickest progress. So this is how you actually learn something! Rather than just gybing and practicing common mistakes, genuinely try these WindWise skills and drills and I can guarantee you’ll make your moves!

Who’s it for?

First time or frustrated veteran gybers in non-planing and planing situations on any volume board. So get out there and go through the run-by–run suggestions, one accentuated point at a time!

Skills & Drills

Session 1 – Upwind-Downwinders

Session 2 – Shift-&-Switching

Session 3 – Clew-First Beachstart

Session 4 – MAKE YOUR MOVE!

Click here to read WindWise 266 in full…

Simon Bornhoft flips the rig...

Simon Bornhoft looks at a very common counterintuitive moment that affects us every time we rotate our rigs at the end of a transition.

In the early days of space travel it was assumed that elongated streamlined shapes would offer the best possible chance of re-entering Earth’s atmosphere safely. Counterintuitively, however, the opposite would appear to be true. NASA’s testing, thankfully, discovered that ‘wider blunt shaped capsules’ provided more effective heat shields when returning back to Earth. NASA’s counterintuitive discovery definitely saved lives, whereas these WindWise suggestions will simply help you avoid doing completely the wrong actions on the water.

Us humans aren’t great at dealing with counterintuitive sporting moments. When learning to ski students don’t initially take to the idea of leaning forward when speeding down a steep slope – they ‘instinctively’ lean (incorrectly) back. It’s a sore backside that encourages them to overcome this counterintuitive action. With windsurfing, much of what we do on a board is fairly clear to see, but there are definitely irregular counterintuitive moments that can be so frustrating and challenging. It’s often during these moments that ‘bad habits’, plateaus, or our dismounts occur.

As your humble coach I’m going to highlight one regular counterintuitive moment that relates to all levels of gybes, helicopter tacks, and any time a rig is rotated. It also involves two of our key windsurfing principles: vision and opposition.

Click here to read WindWise 262 in full…

SB shifting and switching

Simon Bornhoft reveals how our body mechanics determine if we can or can’t move our feet for tacks and gybes.

“Everything’s fine until I move my feet!” This is a refrain that has echoed around windsurfing technique’s hallowed halls since the first tentative tacker’s toe crept in front of the mastfoot, and it can also be heard before and after moving the feet in a gybe. On smaller boards moving the feet can be the hardest, most disruptive make-or-break moment. If you’ve found you keep falling off the front in your tacks or you’re unsettled moving the feet in gybes, there’s a very good reason… You could be trying something that’s not actually humanly possible. No matter how many times you try it, it will never, ever work. In so many cases our body just doesn’t bend, move or flex the way we hope it will. So this feature is simple – and judging from the thousands I’ve coached, it’s hugely influential.

Click here to read WindWise 257 in full…

Jem Hall, grooveriding legend!

BOARDS technique maestro Jem Hall has a few last places left on his clinic to Marvelous Marsa Alam in Egypt on March 16th and 23rd. Plane earlier, sail faster, tack like a demon and gybe like a legend whilst having a fab holiday in warm water and sweet sunshine. Lets Jem’s world class coaching and huge enthusiasm be the guide to help you step up to the next level.

Check out www.jemhall.com and book with Sportif on +44 (0)1273 844919 / info@sportif.travel